Yes, Democrats, Let's Just Give Our Oil Reserves Away

It is irresponsible to reduce our energy reserves just to score political points — but that is what the Democrats want to do.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, created following the oil crisis of the 1970s, exists to supply Americans during a war or other emergency. Democrats are now calling for oil to be released from the reserve to help reduce high gas prices that they themselves have created. This is not an emergency unless you believe that the loss of Democrat seats in the 2022 midterm election constitutes an emergency.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve currently holds 638 million barrels, approximately 1,000 days of net petroleum imports — but far, far less (only 32 days worth) of total domestic demand of 20 million barrels per day. At the maximum draw-down capacity of 4.4 million barrels per day, the SPR would last only 145 days.

In fact, a release of 4.4 million barrels per day would be impossible because it would leave us strategically undefended. It is irresponsible to remove any amount from the SPR except in times of true emergency, but the little that could be removed would not be enough to affect global oil prices and therefore would not significantly reduce gas prices in this country or anywhere else.

In a recent letter to the president, eleven Democrat senators, all from the northeast, listed a half-dozen reasons for higher prices, including "US exports and overseas supply collusion [by OPEC]" — without ever mentioning the primary cause, which is their own and the administration's pressure on the oil and gas industry to reduce drilling.

Give them credit: Democrats have been successful at suppressing energy production and so inflicting misery on most Americans.

The strategic oil reserve is over advertised. It is a supply of petroleum held by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) for emergency fuel to mitigate future supply disruptions. Not to supply the US but to attempt to maintain with any minor loss of source.

The maximum it is designed to handle is 714M barrels, in north Texas, of which it is capable of being drawn at 4.4M barrels a day. In 2020, the United States consumed an average of about 18.19 million barrels of petroleum per day. So it is obviously used as a supplement, not a source, as every day the US uses over 4 times the amount the reserve has to offer. At that rate, the reserve would be empty in just over 162 days if we had to use it at max capacity just to maintain our normal life as that supplement. Everything past that is not available to include expensive imports that they may, or may not, provide.

And another problem to consider is that with the closing of many of the pipelines, the stopping of the fresh drilling in the western US, and slowing production in the current areas to include ANWAR, we wouldn’t be able to maintain the reserve while drawing from it. So we would be more dependent on oil imports even though we are the largest exporter in the world. And none of this includes the oil offshore in Florida or the vast undrilled oil in the Rockies. Cost would get out of hand and we would be under a gun that we already have in our arsenal. We need more self sufficiency. And the world order dems are not going to provide it.

Wy69

If a person doesn’t need to know any more about energy than than what is shown to be apparent by our current energy secretary or our president, then I guess almost any adult with a high school education could handle it nowadays...and possibly even some grade schoolers. They would just need the right attitude.

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